Yep, as above, SS was cromo front triangle, with Araya 7x, DC 890, Cromo forks, bars, Sugino stem, sugino stamped cromo 1pc, and the viper was the same frame but in plain steel throughout, and taiwanese parts. The SS frame was made by Koizumi in Japan, the Viper by Akisu in Taiwan.
See
www.os-db.net for full details - Sparky's site. He's the expert.
The bikes do look similar, but a SS has "Diamond Back II" decals on downtube. Viperjust says "Diamond Back" so it potentially might look like a DB medium pro frame, which is full cromo, but differentiated by the gague of the rear dropouts.